TimK’s Techdirt Comments

There's really nothing the UN or ITU can do if the US says NO. What can they do? They can't take the internet. The appropriate response is a simple "no, and if you don't like it go build your own internet."

What is the UN going to do, try to pass a toothless resolution against the US? Ha! UN resolutions are a joke, and only the US and EU can do anything to enforce them. The US and EU are already opposed to this, and the US, France and UK have veto power anyway. What a waste of time this is, even for the waste of time UN.

Sounds to me like a great opportunity for an institution that encourages problem solving and innovation to step in. If I ran such a school I'd offer this kid a scholarship of some kind to transfer to my school.

Legally Purchase DVD:
Go online and order the movie, then wait several days for it to come in the mail or drive to a local store, wait in line, and then drive back home. Then you get to open ridiculous plastic seals protecting the integrity of the contents, insert disc into proper regionally encoded DVD player, sit though 10 minutes of unskippable trailers, sit through 1 minute of anti-piracy warnings..... watch movie. All for only $19.99

Torrent DVD:
Click on a link, wait a couple of minutes..... watch movie. All for free.

Which one is more consumer friendly?

OK, maybe your PC isn't connected to your TV (Why isn't it?) and you have to rip it to DVD and then ... watch the movie. Still its much less trouble than the legal method. If only the studios would allow services like Netflix to actually stream new/decent movies online....

What a good way to limit the number of people that will read your book, hear of you, or buy another book of yours.

How many people have gotten a book from a friend, read it, enjoyed it, and then bought multiple books from that same author? I'd guess that number is a HUGE number. And disappearing ink, well that will only make that number smaller. So good luck with that. Tell the recording industry we said Hi!

1. I don't own any Apple products so I don't care. But, having owned a dozen cell phones and having bought multiple chargers for each until the micro USB became standard.... I don't feel too bad.

2. Obviously adapters will become available so its not like every dock and charger becomes useless.

3. Everyone who sells their iPhone 4 and 4s to upgrade to the 5 will simply include their chargers in the sale and buy new ones with the phone.

4. Not EVERY iPhone owner is a lunatic who must have the next device immediately. Yes, many of them are, but more people won't upgrade than will. That means the change won't actually impact the majority of iPhone owners.

Just for fun....

Here's a crazy theory: Maybe Apple is changing the dimensions of the new iPhone...perhaps its wider and taller and wouldn't fit in some of the older docks.... so if the old docks wouldn't fit the new phones anyway, now is the perfect time to switch connectors. hmmm....

I agree that a positive information campaign is the right way. Education is the key.

But they're trying to educate the wrong people. Consumers don't need to be educated about legal music offerings. Its the recording and movie industries that need to be educated. They need to learn economics and to give the people what they want in a way that is easy to use and reasonably priced.

That's the only education campaign that will do the slightest bit of good.

"Hey everybody, guess what? We need to raise your property taxes 25% to pay for more schooling. Oh, and good news for those of you with kids in private school....not only do you get to pay 25% more in property tax, you also get to pay 25% more in tuition! But its good for the kids."

By "work around" they mean that they eliminated the menu of choices and instead take you to the default program (dialer for phone #s, maps for addresses, browser for URL's, etc). The defaults can be changed by the user, but its not perfect as there are many cases where you don't want to use the default... such as if you run multiple browsers.

Re: Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...

I agree and disagree. Can I do that?

They definitely want "super heavy users" to use less.

They want everyone else to use less or pay more. There's a reason they set their plan limits the way they do. They know how much a typical user will consume...and they want those users to fall right on the border of plans where they will keep going over and either pay more to upgrade, or use less.

Either way, the carriers THINK they win. Either they get more $ for doing nothing*, or they have to provide less bandwidth so they can avoid expanding/improving their networks.

* They can do nothing being in most cases they aren't actually approaching any real limits on capacity YET. The problem will eventually show up for real as more and more people get smartphones and broadband and the carriers do run into capacity problems - because they decided to play games with caps instead of improving their service ahead of the demand. But that's a lack of competition for you.

It won't stop until it costs them money...

A friend of mine recently bought a "the new iPad" with Verizon 4G data. He wanted it to watch shows on Netflix on the train to and from work. He used it for 2 days and loved it, but said he won't be using it any more. 40 minutes each way on Netflix used over 200MB per day. He'd reach his 2GB cap in 2 weeks! No thanks. Data plan canceled.

The carriers think that everyone will just shell out more money for a higher cap, but in reality they won't. Some people won't care and will pay whatever they have to. Others will simply cancel the data plan, and find the content and copy it to their tablet instead of streaming.

Re: i ain't no musician, but i heard music onced...

You do realize that the song in the commercial IS her song which is why it sounds EXACTLY the same right? And that the supposed copy is in a different link because it couldn't be embedded right? This is all some sarcastic post and I'm not in on it right?

Any who. I for one think the songs sound similar. Not copied. Not the same. Similar. Similar to songs I hear just about every year on the radio from some folksy pop-y artist. Recently, as Dave so thoroughly pointed out, names like Colbie Callait and Sara Bareilles come to mind.

There's similar and then there's "the same". I learned the difference in grade school.

So.....its a freely available public radio broadcast. They are 'listener supported' so they don't have commercials that are being skipped. They don't sell their 'podcasts' online so they aren't losing that revenue...in fact, they have them available FREE on their own website.

So, what exactly is being pirated? And more importantly, why do they care?

I mean, of all the cases of "piracy" that have ever been discussed here, this one I get the least. I mean, I just don't get it.

2 better options...

As I see it, limiting connectivity of the iPad is not the best choice.

I'd like to see the app creators do two things.

1. Release the app on the side and not through iTunes. Then Apple can't block it or remove it. I think the girl's mother would have to jailbreak her iPad to install the app (as would anyone else - but my understanding is this is pretty easy) but this way she doesn't lose all the other usefulness of the tablet.

2. Port the app to Android. Any Android device can sideload apps without even being jailbroken, plus this gives more people access to the app with more affordable options than the iPad.

By doing these two things and making the app available elsewhere from the Apple app store, it pretty much makes it impossible to stop. The app can be mirrored, hosted outside the US, copied and redestributed endlessly, guaranteeing that it will always be available somewhere and even the greatest game of internet whack-a-mole won't stop it.